June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Metal tentacles curl around the Friedericianum in Kassel, Germany, engulfing a corner of the museum. Iole de Freitas's triffid-like sculpture appears to have escaped from the first floor, curved pipes piercing the walls.

The work is part of Documenta, a contemporary art show that happens every five years, lending this unenticing industrial city at the heart of Germany some international and creative flair. Art professionals and tourists fill the hotels, flock to the sausage stands and bars and keep taxi drivers busy around the clock.

The wealth of art events across Europe means early visitors may already be footsore from the Venice Biennale and Art Basel. They'll be relying on Documenta for an energy shot before Skulptur Projekte Muenster, the last lap of the marathon 2007 art circuit.

If they're looking for sensational new works by the stars of our time, they'll be disappointed. Few of the contemporary artists in Kassel are well known. There's a good chance that many visitors won't have heard of any of them, except perhaps Gerhard Richter, represented by just one small painting.

In fact, one of the most famous participants isn't an artist in the traditional sense and his work isn't on show in Kassel. Ferran Adria, the Catalan chef renowned for challenging preconceived notions of cooking with liquid nitrogen, foam and vegetable mousses, declined to come, saying his art ``has to be eaten to be understood.''

So guests to Documenta will be randomly selected by the curators to dine at a specially assigned table at his Michelin- starred El Bulli restaurant on the Spanish coast.

Monster Display

Even without the Catalan branch, Documenta is a huge, sprawling event at venues strewn around Kassel. It has no real structure or theme. With about 500 items on display, including many video installations, you need two days to get an overview. One exhibition hall, at a temporary structure near the Aue Pavilion, is unpleasant, with tin-foil-like curtains on the ceilings and walls and rubbery red floors.

The curators Roger Buergel and Ruth Noack do name some ``leitmotifs'' in the form of questions for the audience and participants. They aren't much help. One, for example, is ``What is bare life?'' I'll spare you the rest.

Where the curators do help is by giving an aesthetic coherence, with the reappearance of specific forms throughout the exhibition. Ropes, for instance, tie Trisha Brown's ``Floor of the Forest,'' a performance work in which dancers climb into clothes strung across a rope trapeze, to Hito Steyerl's video installation ``Lovely Andrea'' about the search for an old bondage photograph in Tokyo. Sheela Gowda's ``And Tell Him of My Pain,'' a 1998 installation of orange cords, continues the theme.

Emigrants' `Dream'

Among the vast array of materials used by artists on show, oil and canvas are rarities. Some of the most interesting works are by African and Asian artists, often using unusual materials and taking on big, complex themes.

Benin artist Romuald Hazoume's ``Dream'' is a boat made of plastic fuel canisters welded together and hung with photographs and letters. The canisters are open and this boat would sink in seconds. Yet they also resemble row upon row of expectant faces in an image that illustrates the rewards and dangers of emigration.

Also on show in the Aue Pavilion are Hazoume's weird masks (1996-2003) made from differently shaped canisters, some with shells and ropes for eyes and hair. They are both funny and scary, a modern take on a traditional African art that also recalls Picasso's witty portrait jugs.

Nightmare Commute

David Goldblatt movingly tells the story of ``The Transported of KwaNdebele'' in a series of understated 1983 photographs. Yawning workers take a four-hour bus journey to Pretoria, returning at night. Some leave their homes at 2 a.m. and don't return until 10 p.m. The bumpy journey on an overcrowded bus becomes a desperate quest to steal sleep, with strangers lolling against each other as heavy heads look for a place to rest.

Lu Hao's ``Recording 2006 Chang'an Street'' combines modern themes with ancient materials. Minutely painted on long scrolls of silk in inks, the artist documents the architecture on a main road in Beijing. By carefully detailing the flyovers, office blocks and residential monstrosities in delicate colors, he contrasts their anonymity with the loving craftsmanship and deep traditions of his own work, which in turn becomes a pointed criticism of the changing face of his city.

From political to personal, Hu Xiaoyuan's ``A Keepsake I Cannot Give Away'' (2005) is an assortment of 20 samplers in old embroidery rings. The artist has used her own hair as thread to sew unfeasibly minute stitches on silk. Some of the samplers show isolated features, like an eyelash or a lip. The collection together looks curiously intimate and yet exposed to the world in museum-style showcases.

You may wonder why there are so many old wooden chairs around the exhibition. The answer is that they are part of Ai Weiwei's ``Fairytale.'' Ai has invited 1,001 Chinese people from different regions to come to Documenta in five stages.

They have never been in a foreign country and mostly don't speak another language. They are in Kassel on condition that they stay in the city and document their impressions. The chairs have been collected and restored by the artist.

It does mean there are plenty of seats if you need a break -- and lots of opportunities to hone your Chinese language skills.

Documenta runs through Sept. 23 in Kassel, Germany.

(Catherine Hickley is a writer for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Hickley in Berlin at chickley@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 18, 2007 05:00 EDT